The Reddit Games with a Hook hackathon ran for one month, drew 3,071 registered participants, and received more than 700 submitted games. Among the prize categories was a $5,000 Best Use of Phaser award, judged by a Phaser panel alongside Reddit's own. Cattack! took it.
The game is a cat-collecting space card game built with Phaser 3 and React by a solo developer known on Reddit as u/derppherppp. You explore hand-drawn planet maps, settle encounters with poker-style card duels where your cat companions bend the scoring in your favour, and open a fresh pack every day. Every cat card and every planet map was drawn by hand. The game began as a space runner and evolved into what it became over the course of the month.
We sat down with the developer to find out how it happened. You can also read about the other four Phaser winners in our full hackathon roundup.
The Interview
From Digital Artist to Phaser Game Developer
Q: Tell us a bit about yourself. What is your background as a developer, and had you made games before Cattack!?
I have been a digital artist for years, but my background is mostly web dev. Someone in the Devvit program suggested I try bringing my art to life through games, so I took the plunge. It was super overwhelming at first! Game dev forces you to do everything, so you cannot just be an artist or a coder; you have to wear every hat. But little by little I learned new things and Cattack! was born. It has been an insanely rewarding journey and definitely my new passion.
Q: What made you decide to join the hackathon, and was this your first time entering one?
This was actually my second time participating. I entered my very first hackathon about eight months ago. Funny enough, right before this contest was announced, I had actually told myself I was done making games because I was feeling pretty discouraged with my progress. But when I saw the announcement, I decided to put my doubts behind me and joined on an impulsive whim. I am so glad I trusted that impulse!
Q: Cattack! started life as a space runner and ended up as a card game about collecting cats in space. How did that happen?
It was an organic evolution! Originally, I was prototyping an arcade-style space runner. But as I kept building, I realized the core loop just was not delivering that addictive itch I wanted to scratch. I kept asking myself: why would someone want to come back to this? Why invest their free time in it? If I could not answer that clearly, it was time to pivot. So pivot I did. I love roguelikes and card games, so I thought, why not combine both? And that is exactly what I did.
"Finding out I won out of 700+ incredible entries was such a surprise and I am so humbled and honored."
Winning the $5,000 Best Use of Phaser Award at the Reddit Hackathon
Q: You won the $5,000 Best Use of Phaser award out of over 700 submitted games. How did it feel when you found out?
Completely surreal. I still cannot believe it! When you spend a solid month locked into drawing pixel art and staring at code, tweaking multiplier math at 2 AM, you lose perspective on how it will land with others. Finding out I won out of 700+ incredible entries was such a surprise, and I am so humbled and honored.
Building Cattack! with Phaser 3, React and Devvit
Q: You used Phaser 3 for the exploration maps and card battle, and wrapped it in React for the UI. How did that combination work in practice?
It was honestly the ideal marriage. Phaser 3 is an absolute powerhouse for game loops, canvas rendering, physics, and sprite animations. Meanwhile, React works seamlessly on Devvit for standard UI like menus and splash screens. The trick was just keeping a clean state bridge between them so React could trigger scene actions without bogging down the main game loop.
Q: You had never built a tileset before. How did you tackle that in Phaser, and what did you take away from it?
This was my first time ever making tilesets. I had always wanted to try, but one glance at how they worked made my brain melt. Like, I am supposed to use a handful of tiny squares to build an entire world? WHAT?! It was terrifying, but I really wanted it in the game. I spent nearly a week drawing every single pixel on my tablet through tons of trial and error. Integrating them with Phaser's Tilemaps was a huge learning curve, but seeing my custom planet terrains render smoothly in-engine was insanely satisfying.
Q: You say the card math engine is what you are most proud of. How did you go about separating the hand-evaluation logic from the graphics so you could test it properly?
Early on, I realized that testing card combos by manually playing through hands in the actual UI was way too slow. So I decoupled the game's core scoring logic into a standalone JavaScript module, completely separate from Phaser's visual rendering. This let me pass raw card data directly into the evaluation engine to calculate hands, passive Cat Card multipliers, and re-triggers instantly.
Q: You drew every single cat card and planet map by hand. How did you manage asset loading to keep things running smoothly on mobile?
That is the best part of pixel art. Since the source files are built on an itty-bitty 24x24 grid, the file sizes are naturally lightweight, so they load instantly even on a phone browser. The real magic happens in Phaser, where I just scale up the textures dynamically in the scene. It keeps the asset payload tiny while still filling the screen with vibrant, crisp retro art.
Q: What did Phaser make possible in Cattack! that you could not have pulled off otherwise?
Phaser gave me the performant 2D framework I needed to combine two completely different game genres in one project. Having built-in tilemap rendering, robust scene management, and a powerful animation system meant I did not have to reinvent the wheel for rendering canvas graphics. It let me focus entirely on game art and logistics.
One Month to Build a Phaser Card Game from Scratch
"One month to define a concept and bring it entirely to life was an extremely challenging test of my endurance."
Q: One month to dream up a concept and bring it fully to life sounds intense. What kept you going?
It was incredibly challenging, and I definitely doubled that burden by completely changing my game concept halfway through. Honestly, a few days before the deadline, I even told people that I was not going to make it. I truly did not think I could pull it off in time. But seeing the pieces slowly click together kept pushing me forward, and I am so glad I was wrong.
Q: A hackathon like this is a real commitment. What did you have to put on hold to see it through?
That one-month deadline swallowed pretty much every single second of my free time. Sleep took a back seat, my drawing tablet was always with me so I could finish assets while traveling, and the sheer mental exhaustion was something I really was not prepared for. I found myself backing out of social plans just to secure enough development hours. I am ultimately so glad I did, though, because this project completely rebirthed my love for making games.
Q: What are your plans for Cattack! from here?
This is just the beginning for Cattack!. My first order of business is polishing all the little things I could not get to because of the short turnaround time for the hackathon.
Since the game is hosted on Devvit, I want to greatly expand on user-generated content elements and eventually implement real-time multiplayer. The only thing holding me back right now is time, but I will not let it stop me.
Cattack! is live on Reddit at r/cattack. You can also read about the other four Phaser winners from the hackathon in our full roundup.
Play Cattack!
Free to play on Reddit, no account needed beyond your Reddit login. Collect cats, equip them as companions, build poker-style hands, and open a fresh pack every day.